Here at the much vaunted and quite synthetic 100 days milestone we will be peppered with all sorts of analysis about what the President's performance thus far "means."  All of it will be little more than junk food for your brain. I caution one and all to do something else with your time that will prove productive because it will be a while before anyone can make any valid judgments.  I'd also point out that while I think he has done well up to now in the overall sense and while I have a number of bones to pick with our President, it is also exceedlingly unfair to use this arbitrary milestone to evaluate him as President beyond a sort of 'so far, so good' assessment.

As everyone is, by now, aware, the corporate media as a collective entity are severely ADDHD and unable to either focus on anything of import or to remember it for long.  What they do with frightening precision, however, is to glom on to cliche's and repetition because that seems to be the only stuff that burns a nueral pathway strong enough in their brains for them to recall.  The 100 days marker is a meaningless parrellel with FDR's famous first 100 days which, after years of Republican do-nothingism, saw the great President and his massive majority in Congress push through landmark bills that started to put the nation back on the path to economic health.  Using this utterly arbitrary and meaningless marker as some sort of appropriate or relevant milestone with subsequent President's is idiotic but force fed upon the American population because of our corproate media's predeliction for inane, simplistic, and repetitive story lines.  While we do have a slight parrallel between FDR and BHO it is only slight and it's utterly unfair to use FDR as a yardstick, at least at this point.  Circumstances are so vastly different today that it only serves to obfuscate public understanding of the issues and the solutions to today's problems to make shallow comparisons of BHO with FDR---even when they may be flattering to our current President.

The 100 days BS is not unlike the insistence of corporate media on making people think that history occurs in 10 year installments.  This idiotic meme has been so effective that the public often thinks that political, economic, and social changes can only happen within officially recognized decades beginning in years ending in zero and ending in years that end with nine.  The public, so completely un and misinformed about their own history just adopt this crap as truth because it's on tv.  This is why much of what is popularly thought of as happening in the sixties actually occurred during the 1970's.  But the cookie cutter mentality requires categorizing certain things as having happened in the sixties even when they didn't.

This sort of stupidity (and I'm not sure what else it can be called) even when it is benign in and of itself in isolation damages our civic structure and coarsens our baseline for historical reference in this nation to the point where some of the most pernicious lies of the last 60 years are thought to be true.  The corporate medias moronic insistence on false equivalency in reporting that doesn't point out when obvious lies are being told is culpable for this.  If the quality of the output of corporate journalism was even just a tad better it would be a boon to the civic life and future of America.  I will not be holding my breath for that to happen.

Anyway, while the meaningless 100 days milestone is chewed over and over again for the next week it would be nice if someone actually had a conversation about what really constitutes "success" for a Presidency.  Much of our corporate and other media focus on the popularity of the President and this is not illegitimate except when it is presented without context (which naturally happens all the time in corporate media).

Recent historical experience (and by that I mean the past 40 or so years) suggests that much of the success of a new Presidency depends on a handful of things.  Public perception is important. If the media and public perceives the first six months or so of a Presidency as having gone well, it will be difficult to dislodge that impression prior to the re-election campaign year of that President.  That means, more than anything else, no major, ongoing gaffes or scandals and a relatively smooth operation overall.  Our new President thus far, has to receive good marks thus far on this point. Gays in the military got Pres. Clinton off to a very poor start and that impression dogged him throughout his Presidency despite his many successes.  Obama has avoided anything like that up to this point and good for him!  Despite whatever differences many people have with him, most of us do wish the President every success not for himself but for the nation's sake.

The other very important factor in judging whether a new administration is successfull or not is how the legislative agenda unfolds.  The research and the overwhelming evidence of experience tells us that in order to succeed a President's agenda needs to be limited to just 2 or 3 major bills... 4 at the most.  This President has, as a result of circumstances and necessity, been unable to follow this course.  It is risky and while he has experienced some notable success in the stimulus and budget bills, the jury is out on whether this President can be seen as having had success with a first year legislative agenda with many "must do" pieces of legislation in addition to this already mentioned.  I can think of several that are huge and varied that have yet to be dealt with but that any one of which could make or break Obama's Presidency.  There is the ongoing banking/financial crisis that will certainly require major legislation this year, there is the matter of cap and trade legislation, there is this year's budget, there is health care, and there is the defense appropriation bill which now includes the two wars and the Gates attempt to rid the nation of the real boondoggles in the form of defense "systems" that we don't need and that don't really work anyway.

So, in the opening moves of the admistration on the big items that seem to determine how successful an adminsitration is thought to be, our President is doing a pretty good job overall but it won't be either fair or appropriate to start passing judgment on his performance for quite a while yet.  He faces treacherous politics and deeply entrenched interests who oppose nearly everything he is for.  So, my advice to people is don't pay attention to much the pundits have to say right now.  Let's take a look  at how things have played out by the end of the fiscal year next fall and then we'll be in a far better and more sensible position to start evaluation of the administration's performance.